Stepbrother Dearest

When your new stepbrother is both the most infuriating person you've ever met and the most devastatingly attractive, life gets complicated fast.

Greta is sweet, optimistic, and completely unprepared for Elec — the brooding, too-handsome-for-his-own-good boy who arrives in her life when their parents marry and immediately makes it his mission to get under her skin. With his chiseled jaw, sharp tongue, and a stare that somehow manages to be both cutting and hungry at once, Elec is nothing like anyone Greta has encountered before. He picks fights like an annoying sibling, yet looks at her like she's anything but.

Elec has walls built so high they practically scrape the sky, and zero interest in playing happy family. He's conceited, difficult, and occasionally, maddeningly, shows a flicker of something softer beneath all that armor — which somehow makes everything worse for Greta, who knows she should feel nothing for this boy the law now calls her brother.

*Stepbrother Dearest* is a contemporary romance that leans into the delicious forbidden tension of two teenagers forced into close quarters who are absolutely, categorically not supposed to want each other. With sharp romantic comedy wit balanced against genuinely emotional dark moments, Penelope Ward crafts a story about first love, family complications, and the impossible pull between two people fighting feelings neither of them asked for.

Some rules exist for a reason. But some feelings refuse to follow them.